Cut Your Lunch Packing Time In Half!

I hate packing school lunches. One of my problems is that I just can’t get moving in the mornings. I have tried packing them at night, but I can never seem to find the time. Too often I realize that I forgot to pack lunches as I’m laying in bed about to go to sleep. I came up with a great solution for making my kids lunches that cuts the time in half! I’ve told several people about the lunch packing tip and the LOVE it!

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Cut Your Lunch Packing Time In Half

When I come home from the grocery store I have big boxes of snacks. Some are prepackaged like peanut butter crackers, granola bars or raisins. Others are in bags such as pretzels or gold fish. Here’s what I do.

First, I empty out all the prepackaged items from the bigger boxes and dump them in a huge bowl that I keep in the pantry. You can find these just about anywhere. I saw some at Dollar Tree this morning.

Now, I don’t have to waste time doing this on weekday mornings. It’s all done for the week and they’re ready to grab.

I like that there’s a lot of variety and I can see it all in one place and decide what to pack in each bag. I also do this for refrigerated items. When I get a bag of carrots, grape tomatoes, or bunches of grapes, I portion them out so can I can grab them fast. I keep these in a small area of my refrigerator.

The kids can even make their own lunch when I need them to (I love this lunch bag). I know what they will choose because I can say, “Get 2 things out of the blue bowl and 1 out of the refrigerator.”

This has saved me so much time. This works great at snack time as well. The kids can get their own snack without my help. They can grab something if we are in a hurry and need to jump in the car to go somewhere. I hope this trick will work in your home too, especially if you’re like me and have trouble getting moving in the morning.

8 Responses

Great idea! One thing I do is try to pack lunches while im making dinner. That way I dont have to go back into the kitchen at night just to pack lunches. Everything that isnt cold goes into thebags then. In the morning I just have to stuff the cold things.

I really liked your post. I only have my oldest in school right now, but this will be super helpful when all three are in school. I have also chosen you to be featured on next Tuesday’s Laugh and Learn Link Up. Keep up good work, Haleyhttp://haleysvintage.com

As a mother of 2, now grown and married, I did this. As a teaching paraprofessional who has done a daily lunch duty in an elementary school for 28 years, I have some suggestions. Pre-packaging items into ziplock bags is wonderful, but sending in the pre-packaged items like pretzels, chips, fruit snacks, fruit cups, puddings, yogurt (both tubes and cups), pouches and even water bottles or screw top drinks pose a huge problem. Many young children can’t get into this food without assistance and sometimes I can’t either. I am always more than happy to help, but in a lunch period of possibly 150 to 200 children, it takes a while to get to everyone especially if I have to stop and handle a discipline problem, find assistance in cleaning up a spill, or escorting someone to the clinic (and yes, there are other adults helping but they are all doing the same thing). My suggestion is to either empty everything into a ziplock bag or make a cut in the product bag. Unscrewing bottles and screwing the top back on also helps. I’ve even told the older children that if it’s okay with their mom, put a pair of blunt tipped scissors in their lunch box.